Asia Recap: Broad-based demand for the Greenback

FXStreet (Bali) - The US Dollar was by far the best performing currency in Asia, while the Japanese Yen ended significantly lower.

A stops run above 104.50 in USD/JPY got the ball rolling, with larger-than-usual Yen sales at the Tokyo fix helping the upmove, taking not just the pair to new highs around 104.80, but also led to a broad-based USD demand. AUD/USD traded lower at 0.93 from 0.9330-35 NY close ahead of the RBA monetary policy decision. EUR/USD saw new marginal lows at 1.3116 before some timid bids to protect 1.31 barrier emerged. GBP/USD fell back into its range by breaking 1.66 to settle at 1.6580. NZD/USD tested key support at 0.8350, which seems to be holding at the time of writing these lines.

Despite the decent volatility seen in Asia, the major macro event for the session is still to be published at 4.30 GMT, time when the RBA monetary policy will be released, which is widely expected to leave rates unchanged at 2.50%, with the accompanying statement likely to keep the bias firmly neutral, not allowing major clues as to where the next rate move might be headed.

In other fundamental news, Japanese wages were surprisingly up 2.6% from a year ago in July vs +0.9% exp, highest in 17 years. The indicator should encourage stronger consumer confidence and household spending, following the disappointing reading of the latter last week, in which bad weather was blamed.

In Australia, building approvals for July came at +2.5% m/m vs +1.9% exp, with the Q2 BoP current account deficit at -13.7bn vs -14.0bn exp.It is also worth noting that many institutional banks have been revising the Australia's Q2 GDP estimates for tomorrow, given recent upbeat inputs on dwelling construction, household consumption and inventories, which should make positive contributions to growth. In New Zealand, the ANZ commodity price index for August came poor at -3.3% vs -2.4% last, with falling dairy prices weighing.